• purpleworm [none/use name]@hexbear.net
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      8 days ago

      It’s been illegal in basically all modernized states and their colonies for a very long time. The exact definitions and status vary by place and time, but some form of it is basically universal in those states.

      The idea that the USSR was more hostile to homeless people than a place like the US at the same time is completely unfounded and revisionist, because exactly the opposite was true for reasons the other user stated. In the US, the nicest reception a vagrant might get is to be threatened away, with the common alternative of being thrown in jail and, less commonly though it still happened, just being beaten, sometimes to death, if the cops are feeling frisky. Socialist states generally were more interested in getting people housed so they could operate as productive members of society because most vagrants don’t actually want to be vagrants, though it was probably pretty intolerant to the small minority of people who for various reasons found living in conditions consistent with “vagrancy” to be desirable.

    • Sithlorddahlia [none/use name]@hexbear.net
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      8 days ago

      There was a Supreme Court ruling either last year or two years ago criminalizing vagrancy. The governor of California and I think the governor of New York were the first ones to take advantage of the ruling. There’s videos of Gavin Newsom destroying homeless encampment with his barehands.